On a deep red rose, The angry lion trod…

13 July 2016 – ASTRO-WEATHER –The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower gets underway this week. Although the shower doesn’t peak until the end of July, you should start to see some meteors in the hours before dawn. The best time to look is between 3 & 4 a.m. after the Moon has set & before twilight intrudes. To tell a Southern Delta Aquarid meteor from a random dust particle burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, trace the streak of light’s path backward. A shower meteor will appear to originate from the constellation Aquarius the Water-bearer.

The Moon reaches apogee, the farthest point in its orbit around Earth, at 12:24 am CDT

The Big Dipper, high in the northwest after dark, is now turning around to “scoop up water” through the evenings of summer & early fall

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100 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar – “The Gallic Wars”

1298 – Deathday of Blessed Jacobus de Varagine, an Italian chronicler & archbishop of Genoa. He was the author, of Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies of the legendary lives of saints of the Middle Ages. The Golden Legend is the source of the Rose Cross Meditation that Rudolf Steiner often quoted.

1727 – The founding of The Herrnhuter Brotherhood, The Moravian Church – Unitas Fratrum – Unity of the Brethren – predating the Protestant Reformation by a century, it was really the 1st Protestant Church, with its heritage dating back to the Bohemian Reformation in the fifteenth century. It places a high value on ecumenism, personal piety, music -communio sub utraque specie, married priests, & eliminating indulgences & the idea of Purgatory. The Church’s emblem is the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) with the flag of victory, surrounded by the Latin inscription: Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur “Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him”

1863 – New York City draft riots: violent demonstrations that were the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots remain the largest civil & racial insurrection in American history, aside from the Civil War itself

1878 – Treaty of Berlin: The European powers redraw the map of the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro & Romania become completely independent of the Ottoman Empire

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica characterizes Hamerling as one of the most remarkable poets of the modern Austrian school, describing his imagination as rich & his poems as full of life & color. In his most popular poem, Ahasver in Rom (1866), the emperor Nero is the central figure. Among his other works, Venus im Exil (1858); Der König von Sion (1869), characterized as a masterpiece; Die sieben Todsünden (1872) Blätter im Winde (1887); Homunculus (1888); Amor und Psyche (1882).

In Karmic Relationships Vol. 2, lecture 6, Steiner describes him as a pupil of Plato in an earlier incarnation.

1923 – The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated. It originally reads “Hollywoodland ” but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949

1943 – Battle of Kursk was the final defeat of the German army. With the Soviet line at Kursk protruding into enemy territory, the Germans attempted to attack from different directions. Given time to reposition their defenses, the Soviets held off the offensive before launching a counterattack. Facing the American invasion of Sicily & the threat of an Italian collapse, Hitler decided to call off operations at Kursk, its failure shifting the balance of power.

1963 – Deathday of Albert Steffen a poet, painter, dramatist, essayist,& novelist. He joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 & became its president after the death of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, in 1925. Steffen was chief editor of the society’s journal, Das Goetheanum, from 1921-1963

His earliest works, predating his encounter with anthroposophy, already manifest a spiritual awareness. His later works, which reflect a vision of the world permeated by metaphysical powers of good & evil, draw on a wide range of esoteric European & Asian traditions

1973 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the “Nixon tapes” to the special Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in.

2013 – George Zimmerman is found not guilty in the shooting of Trayvon Martin

2013 – Typhoon Soulik kills at least nine people & affects more than 160 million in East China &Taiwan.

2016 – Theresa May succeeds David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; she is the second female Prime Minister, after Margaret Thatcher

On his sixty-third birthday Rudolf Steiner gave the following meditation to Dr. Ita Wegman:

“Hearts interpret Karma

When hearts learn to read

The Word,

Which creates in

Human Life;

When hearts learn to

Speak the Word

Which creates in

The Human Being”

When Michaelic thinking has truly been activated, intelligence will stream through the hearts of human beings & that it will be connected to the same divine spiritual forces that helped to create humanity in the beginnings of time.

For spiritually active pupils in the Michaelic stream, the heart becomes: An eye for self-cognition, the realization of the true self as eternal being; it also becomes the eye of the Ego-sense, the true ‘I’ – which perceives the ‘other’ in their true being, also, an eye of cognition for supersensible beings & for the etheric Christ Himself -protected & cherished in the Michaelic mystery-culture of will; it will also become possible to perceive the karma of others as well as our own karmic chain.

It has become possible for souls connected to Michael to be engaged in a goal-oriented schooling for initiation to enter into closer connection with the hierarchies & the etheric Christ, who reveals Himself today as an angel. It is Michael’s aim that the spiritual schooling will lead to heart-knowledge & that the etheric eye of the heart will become an organ of cognition.

We read the following in the Michael-Letters:

“The Christ-force imprints human imaginations into the cosmic ether.”

“That which man experiences as strength of conscious imagination becomes world content.”

“Hearts begin to have thoughts, that is the new way of thinking with the heart.”

“The newly developed heart-organ slowly transforms into an eye or better a sensing-heart-eye-organ.”

“Everyone who strives in the light of spiritual science and connects himself with the creative World-Logos through heartfelt thoughts, sooner or later will learn to read Karma. By doing so he adds to the substance of the etheric-youth or angel-being through which the etheric Christ reveals Himself today.”

We experience our Self in our eternal being. When our heart-sense becomes a cognitive organ, we feel as if our heart is being transplanted into the Sun, as if we go with the sun, the sun is in us, belonging to us. The Sun becomes our eye, our ear, as well as our organ of warmth. “We stand within the light, we touch spirit-beings with our light-organs.” Then we not only feel ourselves within the Sun but we perceive ourselves “on the other side of the Sun”. We experience the world within our being, previously it was outside of ourselves -around us. Rudolf Steiner tells us it is an experience which we go through unconsciously during sleep.

It is the powerful esoteric call to each pupil of Michael, to help in the creation of a new Sun-Earth. This is the way in which the secret of the Grail lives – as Christian Morgenstern says: “I lift my heart to you as a true vessel of the Grail …”

It is the experience of being totally imbued with the spirit of eternity, which fills the receiving Soul-Grail in a cultic spirit event at the Sun-altar. Here Spirit & Soul truly unite. It is the Michaelic path to the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem.